Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Havingdone155 km in day during my long trip, I was keen oncrossing200 km per day which I felt was achievable by meprovided battery charging is taken care of.Shankarannawho servicesmy omni past ten yearshad installed a inverterin his Nano car and offeredtojoin me.When we werefinalizing our trip, he called his brother Mohanasking him if he will come with us.

Iwas scared of chillyweatherand left home@ 6 AM with three layer of clothing and lights on.The programmable meterfrom Canadawasrestrictingthepower flow duringwet &chilly conditions. So I switched it off tillsun came up therebylosing power usage dataduringthose few km.I could get the distance datafrom GPS.Theusualroad was dug upforup gradation andI used interiorroads to reachNH towards Bangalore.

Iwas coming out of hotel after breakfastwhenShankaranna & Mohan reachedUppinangady.Therewekeptthebattery used till then for chargingin Nano. They went inside the hotel for breakfast and I hit the road towardsNelyadi.Part of thismoderately uphill road isone of the most enjoyable to pedal I found so far.Dinakarhappenedtomeet us by chanceand hegaveproper road directionstowardsDharmasthala.There aremanyinterior roadsin verygood conditiondue topradhana manthrigraameenarasthe ......

Therewas a switch betweenBattery and inverter that started malfunctioningand connected cables became hotsaid Shankarannaand Ifeltit is a bad omen & will slow down our progress.Still wekeptgoing forward & Dharmasthala,Ujre and Belthangady passed one after the other.

PassingGuruvayanakereIremembered old acquaintanceRanjan Rao whom I had not seen past twenty years.AlocalTVstringerchased us on motorcycle &caughtus whilewe were havingroadsidediscussion.There we happened to meet a staff of Ranjan who said he is in town &will leave for Bangalore later.So I decided to see Ranjan Rao andfollowed him.Later we found thathe had already leftfor Bangalore and SmtVidyaNayakwhom we metarranged forbatterycharging.

Our TV stringerfriendafter making avideo clipsummoned aUdayavani reporterwho interviewedmewhile my trike batteries were charging.Astudio ownerin Ujre had hoppedonto bus following us and he caught usnearGuruvayanakereand we couldn’t say NO for his request forphoto. Thishas happened to me many times, being followed byphotographers and common man.Ihad to oblige them without losingsight of mytargetwhich sometimesisverytricky & I do not want to appear rude.

By afternoon, we felt we couldn’tdobalanceof 200 kmas we had done onlyabout 75 km then.Shankarannamanaged to set right the battery switchby thenthat enabledgood charging from inverter but havinglost precious timewe were compelled to be satisfied with lessdistance.

Sixhours ridingcovered one hundred and thirty five km.Once in Belthangady Idid forget to switch GPS onfor some distance.Maximum speed of theday was 48.5 kmphwith moving average of21 kmph.Batterypower consumed was1500 Wh.Highermoving average anduneven roadsresultedin more power consumed.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Months back I was working one-assistcyclingpossibilitiesfor my trike& once had adiscussion with Shankaranna.He was very muchskepticthat humaninput can displacebatteryusageand said it will use battery anyway.Later he admitted it is working aftermydemonstration, butI never got along to explain to curiousonlookerswho see me on the road.

Sopresentlymytrike runs on human effort plusbatterypower. I am working on adding solarenergytothe above inventory so thatridingrangeis considerably increased.There are plenty of hurdlesto crossand it is expensive too. Plentyof technicalproblemsandrightmaterials not available in India.Will keep lookingforabreakthrough.